National Home Price Drop..Catching up to San Diego’s Continuing Slide

Just out …. Housing prices decline nationally for the first time since 1995 and inventory sets a record.

The National Assn. of Realtors said the median price for a previously owned home, including condominiums, fell to $225,000 in August, down 1.7% from a year earlier.

“Prices are going to get worse before they get better,” said David Lereah, chief economist at the Realtors’ association, citing the glut of homes on the market. The for-sale inventory reached 3.92 million units in August, up 1.5% from July and a 7 1/2 -month supply at current sales rates.

In San Diego County the median price slipped 2.2 percent.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Napa County’s sales plunged more than 47 percent, but represented a relative small number of sales, only 119 this August compared to 438 last year. More representative of the area, Alameda County suffered a 28.2 percent sales decline and Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) was behind last August’s sales by 24.9 percent.
Los Angeles-based KB Home said last week that new-home orders on the West Coast plunged 58% in the three months ended Aug. 31 compared with a year earlier. Countrywide Financial Corp. of Calabasas, the nation’s biggest mortgage lender, warned workers last week to brace for layoffs.

The real estate boom of the last decade has been unprecedented in size and scope, which raises the risk that the downside also could exceed forecasters’ best guesses, said Eric Belsky, executive director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.  San Diego real estate agent

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